Game of Thrones tops 2015's piracy charts

In what is fast becoming an annual tradition, Game of Thrones has once again won the extremely dubious award of being the most pirated television show for the year.

2015 is the fourth year in a row that HBO's adaptation of George R.R. Martin's sword-and-sorcery titan has seen out the calendar with the 'honour'. It's little surprise, really -- after the fifth season finished earlier this year, it had set records as the most illegally-downloaded show ever, beating its own record from 2014.

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The season finale, Mother's Mercy, was downloaded an incredible 14.4m times via BitTorrent alone, TorrentFreak estimates. That figure doesn't account for pirates acquiring episodes through other illicit channels, either.

Fellow genre hit The Walking Dead and geek-bait sitcom The Big Bang Theory round out the top three most pirated television shows. Both fall well short of the numbers of downloaders swarming Game of Thrones though -- they only attracted an average 6.9m and 4.4m downloads, respectively.

The full top ten list of torrented shows is:

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Game of Thrones

The Walking Dead

The Big Bang Theory

Arrow

The Flash

Mr. Robot

Vikings

Supergirl

The Blacklist

Suits

Those rankings may seem disappointing for content producers, but it's worth considering that 2015 also saw Game of Thrones in particular enjoy its most successful year of legal availability. The show's UK broadcaster, Sky, hailed the season five climax as its highest-rated entertainment programme ever, while several of the series listed appear on legal streaming services such as Netflix or Amazon Prime soon after their over-the-air transmission.

Overall download numbers for Game of Thrones may be higher than usual for the year too, given the opening four episodes of season five were leaked online ahead of broadcast. With the files traced back to a press screener disc, it's a mistake HBO is unlikely make for the upcoming sixth season, set to premiere in April 2016.